


Bobblehead

by Cesare



Category: X-Men (Movies), X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fusion, Alternate Universe - Human, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Music & Bands, Alternate Universe - Ordinary People, Alternate Universe - Romantic Comedy, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-01-25
Updated: 2013-02-27
Packaged: 2017-11-26 21:34:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,614
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/654636
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cesare/pseuds/Cesare
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Inspired by <a href="http://palalife.tumblr.com/post/41412153422/codenamecesare-palalife-doodles-inspired">artwork and a plot idea by Palalife</a> based on Michael Fassbender's upcoming film <a href="http://www.independent.ie/lifestyle/independent-woman/celebrity-news-gossip/michael-fassbender-appears-with-fibreglass-head-throughout-new-film-3348976.html">Frank</a>. Originally two ficlets posted <a href="http://codenamecesare.tumblr.com/post/41356206030/palalife-doodles-inspired-by-michael">here</a> and <a href="http://codenamecesare.tumblr.com/post/41437725197/bobblehead"> here</a> on Tumblr.</p><p>Max's lyrics are largely taken from the writings of Carl Jung.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [palalife](https://archiveofourown.org/users/palalife/gifts).



"Ugh, Charles, someone's following you..?" Raven looks over his shoulder, disturbed.

Charles glances quickly back, and smiles to himself. "Ah, him. I saw him earlier, he must live in the neighborhood. Following me, you really think?"

"You're such a weirdo magnet!" Raven moans. "Don't tell me you're encouraging him."

"He seems nice," Charles defends. "I saw him go out of his way to open a door for an older lady at the chemist's."

"You and your little rehabilitation projects. You're going to end up with a houseful of three-legged cats and broken-winged pigeons and dudes in _giant plaster heads_ if you're not careful."

The warning's not entirely hypothetical. Growing up, Charles did have a tendency to take in stray cats-- it wasn't as if they couldn't spare the room-- and while the household staff would take home or adopt out some of them, the cats with one eye or a ragged ear or three legs usually remained in the stables. But the pigeon Charles looked after for a few days had a hurt leg, not a broken wing. And the man across the street from them wearing a large round head with neatly painted features, huge blue cartoon eyes and a slightly open mouth, painted dark hair parted to the side...

"I think it's papier-mâché, actually," Charles says, in part just to see Raven gnash her teeth and tear at her hair. He's a horrible brother, sometimes.

He's not such a good neighbor, either. A fellow ambling about in a large papier-mâché head is surely sending a fairly definitive signal that he would prefer not to be approached, but when Charles spots him in the supermarket, he can't resist walking over and saying, "Hi."

After a pause, the man's voice is, predictably, a little muffled by the head. "Yes? Hello." Even muffled, it's a nice voice.

"I just moved into the area," Charles says. "Three blocks from here." It's a bit hard to know where to look; there's no telling if the person inside is gazing out through the eyes of the mask, but for lack of anywhere better to focus, Charles looks there.

"Welcome to the neighborhood," says the man. He's quite thin, up close that's even more obvious, but he has nicely broad shoulders and beautiful long hands.

"Thank you very much. It's so lovely here. Very walkable. With everything so convenient and just twenty minutes to the university on foot, I might not even need a car."

"Probably not," the man says. "You're a student?"

"I'm a teacher. Genetics," Charles smiles, and offers his hand. "Charles Xavier."

"Nice to meet you," the man says, shaking his hand. "I'm... a musician."

"Oh? What do you play?"

"Whatever's around. We kind of do an experimental stage show... satirical... musical... thing."

"Like The Residents?" Charles ventures a guess. Experimental music, head-covering disguises, it seems like an obvious influence.

"Yeah," says the man. "I mean... yeah. You know them?"

"I can't remember now how I got hold of it, but my first year at university, I really liked their Freak Show album. I listened to it nearly every day, my first term."

"Oh," the voice within the head says. "I hate that album."

Charles bursts into laughter. He may have finally met someone who's actually even more prone to tactless blurting than he is. "You don't have to like it," he promises. "I have liking it covered. I would go so far as to say that I like it quite enough for two people, if not more. Do you perform around here?"

"We're at the Unitarian church every Friday night at ten. Not really a show. More of a workshop."

"I'd love to see your work."

"Huh. Then... I guess you should come out."

Charles beams at him. "I can't wait."

-

His encounter with the papier-mâché-headed musician leaves Charles a bit nostalgic for that Residents album he liked so much in his first year at Harvard, and he wastes some time that evening on YouTube, looking up the songs and listening to them again.

Ten years on, they're every bit as strange as he remembers; most of the album sounds as if it comes from another planet. Starting university at sixteen, Charles had felt quite like an alien himself, and when he stayed in his room revising all the time, listening to such strange esoteric music had made him feel as if he were being arty and introverted, rather than ignored by his older classmates and lonely.

Now he's an adult and a tenure-track professor, and he doesn't have the excuse of being two years younger than his peers to explain why he's holed up in his flat rather than out and about. But then, that's one of the pleasures of adulthood, isn't it, Charles reflects as he puts the kettle on. He can make all sorts of questionable decisions, and answer to no one but himself.

It's too late for caffeinated tea, but he makes himself a pot of Darjeeling regardless, buys the Residents album on iTunes and loads it onto his phone. It accompanies him everywhere throughout the rest of the week, recalling to his mind all sorts of funny things he first encountered in his early student days. By the time Friday night rolls around, Charles is sufficiently girded for whatever might happen, he thinks, though he's hoping he won't have to ignore any giggling people saying "Fnord."

At the church, he follows a couple of taped-up sheets of paper bearing arrows to a large plain box of a room, with rows of folding chairs and a space in front with loads of musical instruments scattered about; not exactly a stage, since it's not raised in any way. Well, the mystery musician did say it was a workshop, not a show. Still, there are a dozen or so people sitting in the folding chairs, so Charles joins them and waits to see what will happen.

What happens is that the papier-mâché-headed fellow enters from a side door, leading in a half-dozen other people who, upon getting situated with their instruments, don masks of their own, from a Phantom of the Opera half-mask to a furry ape head. The papier-mâché-headed guy says into a microphone that doesn't appear to be turned on, "I'm Max, and this week we're The Beach Police," and then the music starts. Presumably it's music. The masked people sort of heave and pound at their instruments, and the mess seems to all be vaguely in the same key.

Max begins to half-chant and half-sing in a pinched, cartoonish voice. Charles can scarcely make out any words, and what he can decipher doesn't make much sense. He's reasonably sure he hears "the smell of milk" at one point, less certain of "eruptions from the imperishable world." The remarkable thing, though, is that Max's warbling and not especially tuneful voice nevertheless makes the whole cacophony sound _purposeful_ , as if it couldn't possibly sound any other way.

There's a song that seems to be about various heights that could be suicidally jumped from and something about a "cock throne"-- Charles is quite sure he heard that one right-- and one that might concern tadpoles, and another song that begins "I want to scrape the paint off every canvas in the Louvre" and concludes with "I want to scrape the face off every person in the world," the whole thing somehow sounding more plaintive than violent.

And then the whole thing stops, and Max says, "Next week we're Wandering Mustache," and the musicians file out the way they came. The seated people applaud, and they all head to the back of the room. At some point a table was set up with a donation box, some open boxes of Girl Scout cookies, two thermoses of coffee and one of tea. Charles gets himself a cup of tea and a Thin Mint and puts a ten in the donation box. Some people from the band show up and receive amiable backslaps and praise.

Charles waits around awkwardly while the thin crowd chats and snacks and gradually dwindles around him, but Max never comes back.

-

"Him again," Raven says the next morning when Charles meets her at the farmer's market.

"Who?" Charles asks, turning. Max is around the corner of the bank building, turned in their general direction, but of course the papier-mâché head makes it impossible to know where he's looking. "Oh, Max."

"You know your creepy stalker's name now? Don't say it three times in front of a mirror, this is totally a horror movie waiting to happen."

Charles rolls his eyes. "Nothing scary about it. He's a musician, as it turns out. I went to a performance, it was interesting. And you can rest easy, he's definitely not stalking me. He couldn't have missed me in the audience but he didn't come find me after."

"If he's not stalking you, then how come the last two times I've seen you, he's been lurking around, both times?"

"He lives around here. I haven't been here long," Charles points out, "and that head is rather conspicuous, so you spot him when he's around, but it's a coincidence. There are probably other new neighbors of mine you've seen more often than him, it's just none of them have memorable headwear."

"Fine, fine, whatever. Do you think anyone has raspberries?"

-

Charles wasn't just trying to reassure his sister; he really doesn't believe Max is stalking him. He continues not to believe it when he sees Max at the bookshop, and later, the cafe. There are a limited number of places near the farmer's market to shop and spend time, it's not strange that Max happens to choose two of the same destinations as Charles.

He doesn't even find it odd when he ducks on impulse into a tiny magic shop and Max turns up there as well. The man is a performer, after all, he has reason to be there, while Charles is just poking his nose in out of curiosity; really, Max would be well within his rights at this point to wonder if Charles is stalking _him._

When Max tips up at the antique shop, though, Charles does have to wonder, and it seems too much to chalk up to coincidence when Max is once again at the supermarket at the same time as Charles, particularly when Charles detours into the produce department and Max soon drifts there too.

Funny thing about a giant papier-mâché head: it makes a person remarkably easy to sneak up on. "I shouldn't think you'd need anything here," Charles says from just behind Max's shoulder, and Max jumps. They've both been shopping at least twenty minutes and Charles's basket is brimming; Max doesn't have any groceries except a single cylinder of parmesan cheese.

"Uh," Max's voice reverberates from within the head.

"You probably don't need anything in this section, do you? Seeing as how you were at the farmer's market this morning," Charles clarifies, "where they had fruits and veg for miles."

"I forgot-- asparagus," Max says, grabbing up a bundle from the nearby display. "Just found it."

"How lucky," Charles says. "Were you also looking for asparagus at the magic shop, and the bookstore, and that antique place?"

"You came to the workshop," Max says.

It's a fair cop. It's not really fair to treat Max's appearances as if they're sinister, when Charles was the one seeking him out, last night.

"I did," says Charles. "It was fun."

"Fun," Max repeats. The shell of the head makes his tone impossible to read, and of course there's no facial expression to go by, either. "I'm glad you..."

Charles waits, but finally says, "I think 'liked it' might be what you're feinting toward? I did like it."

"Okay." Max shifts on his feet. "There's another one this Friday, they're... every Friday."

"I'll come," Charles says. "Now, I think we've established that our interest is mutual, wouldn't you say? So why don't we do this on purpose?"

"This?"

"Meeting up," says Charles. It seems to knock Max back on his heels a bit, his hands tightening around his asparagus and parmesan. "Look, put it this way," Charles says, "I'll be at the cafe tomorrow afternoon at four. If by purest synchronicity, you happen to be there at the same time, say, looking for more asparagus... then don't just loiter about. Come sit with me."

Max doesn't say anything for several moments, during which Charles considers the wisdom of coming on strong with someone who elects to cover his face at all times. Still, whatever it says about Max, Charles doesn't find the head an obstacle at all. Everyone is always wearing a mask of one sort or another. Max's paper head just makes his obvious. Though of course Charles has no idea if that's the statement Max intends to be making. Considering the obscurity of his lyrics the night before, it might be something to do with dragonflies, or possibly the Knights Templar.

"Four o'clock. See you," Max says abruptly, and turns on his heel and walks away. If he was aiming for a dramatic exit, he probably should've dropped his purchases. Charles goes to queue for the till and spots Max at the self-checkout, his round paper head bend over the laser scanner as it persistently refuses to price his parmesan cheese.

Charles is really looking forward to their coffee date.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Palalife drew more [Erik-in-the-plaster-Frank-head](http://palalife.tumblr.com/post/43852471874/doodle-continuation-of-frank-erik-au-or#notes-container)! so here is a bit more of this. Charles and "Max" have coffee.
> 
> -
> 
> Max says, "Tell me the last thing you'd want me to know about you."
> 
> "The last thing I'd want you to know. You in particular?" Charles stalls.
> 
> "I'm the only one you're talking to."

Charles leaves a bit early for the cafe on Sunday. He more than half expects to be stood up, but he hates to be late for anything, even being jilted.

To his surprise, when he arrives several minutes early, Max is already there, table claimed, a cup of coffee before him. Charles wonders how he means to drink it. The papier-mâché head is still firmly in place, of course.

Going over, Charles leans toward the sculpted ear-- this close he sees it has several holes to admit sound, with some sort of dark mesh fabric covering them inside. "I'm going to get a coffee, I'll be back in a tick."

Max nods, and toys with his cup and-- oh, he has a coffee straw.

Charles gets a chai latte and returns to sit across the table from Max, who's still fidgeting with the straw. Small talk doesn't feel right, so Charles simply plunges in with, "I was wondering if you had any recordings of your songs. I thought they were intriguing but I couldn't always make out the words."

"I never record," says Max. "Performances happen in a particular time and place and context. I don't believe in stripping all that down to just the music on its own."

"You don't believe in recorded music in general? Or just for you?"

"For me. I don't care what other artists do. I don't care what other _people_ do. People have recorded us a few times. If that's their experience of the performance, fine, but it's not mine. I won't stop anyone from recording, but I won't accommodate it, either."

"I imagine by the same token you don't write out your lyrics to share."

"No." Max lifts his coffee cup and threads the straw in through a small, shadowed hole in the mouth of the mask.

"I suppose I'll just have to keep coming to the workshops if I'm ever to suss out the words, then."

The papier-mâché head shifts, but it's still not directed fully at Charles, so who knows where the person inside is looking.

Charles takes a sip of his latte and considers. "I suppose that's why you change the name of the band every week as well? That would make it harder to search for on YouTube, or anywhere like that."

"Maybe that's part of it," Max allows.

The papier-mâché head is very smooth, Charles notes. It must have been sanded before it was painted. He's tempted to ask Max if he made it himself. But while Max seems to truck in bluntness, he hasn't mentioned the mask. It seems unkind to ask.

Max says, "Tell me the last thing you'd want me to know about you."

"The last thing I'd want you to know. You in particular?" Charles stalls.

"I'm the only one you're talking to."

It's oddly liberating to consider the options; to realize he might actually be willing to say some, or even most, of these things out loud. Presently he goes with, "I'm suing my stepfather for control of a three and a half billion dollar estate."

Max nods. Of course, if any sort of surprise registers for him, Charles can't see it. The lack of visible response is rather freeing as well.

"What about you?" Charles asks. "What's the last thing you'd want me to know about you?"

"I want to sleep with you," Max says.

"Oh, come on, that doesn't count," Charles says. "I knew that."

"I never said it was going to be quid pro quo."

"Well, it should be. Even a serial killer would give me that much," says Charles. "I don't think it's very sporting of you. Go on, tell me another."

"You knew that?" Max asks. He sounds amused, probably. "Not that you suspected or guessed or hoped, you just knew?"

"Sorry, am I meant to pretend to think I'm not attractive? Is it like that boy band song, what makes you beautiful is that you don't know you're beautiful, so presumably now that you've been told, it's all over?"

"I'm not sure what song you mean."

"Well, lucky you, it's dreadful," Charles says. "Anyway: yes, I already knew that you want to sleep with me. You behave like you want to sleep with me. And I have it on good authority that I am eminently fuckable."

Max's head rocks back a little, the doll-like eyes unchangingly wide. "What good authority is that?"

"Tony Stark, as it happens." That's another thing that occurred to Charles as the last thing he'd want Max to know about him, along with _My mother offered me a nose job for Christmas four years running_ and _I still have bad dreams about my stepbrother_. And yet, here Charles is, indirectly bringing it up; and having been asked, it's remarkably easy to talk about it. "You have to admit, if anyone would know, it's a man who regularly appears on tabloid magazine covers for his sexual escapades."

"You've met Tony Stark."

"See above in re: three and a half billion dollars. My family... the estate owns around four percent stock in Stark Industries. My father and Howard Stark were acquainted."

"Huh," says Max. "What was it Stark said-- was that eminently fuckable, or _imminently_ fuckable?"

"I like to think it was eminently," Charles says, "but both would've been equally accurate on that particular occasion."

Inside his paper head, Max takes a deep breath and exhales sharply. It's expressive, but Charles can't make out what it might mean.

"So that's me," Charles says. "I come from money, but I like to think I didn't stay there. I left home to go to university when I was sixteen and I've not been back. I've been teaching genetics for three years now. Tony is an old friend from my boarding school days. A year older and, as you can imagine, a great deal wilder."

"And you walked away from all that," Max says-- skeptically, Charles expects, though it's hard to be sure.

"I jaunted over to academia, where at least all the backbiting and scheming is over something meaningful," says Charles. "I don't mean I renounced all earthly ties, or anything. The lawsuit regardless, I got hold of enough of the estate to be going on with-- at those sums, a couple of million is a rounding error. I want control of the rest largely to give it away, though that's probably motivated by spite as much as altruism. It'll kill Kurt to see that money go to charity."

He's starting to wonder if there are any therapists who wear masks like that; it's remarkably freeing to talk to someone so attentive, yet impassive. Oh, but of course, that's probably the principle behind the couch, in classic psychotherapy. Not to mention the confessional.

"There, you've heard a lot more than the last thing I'd want to tell you. That was at least three or four of my last things, amongst all that. So that's me," Charles repeats. "What about you?"

The moment holds. Max rests his hands on the table; he's wearing thin white gloves. Charles tries to remember if Max was always wearing those. He doesn't think so. Together with the head, they make Max look even more like a cartoon character, not a person.

There's a person in there, though, and he owes Charles at least one secret. Charles finds himself hoping Max doesn't take off the head. He hopes Max's face isn't the last thing Max would want him to know.

"Here," Max says suddenly, and he digs in his jacket, slapping a small notebook onto the table. He scrawls in it for some little time, while Charles looks on, sipping his drink and trying not to crane his head to look.

Max tears out the pages and pushes them to him; despite his haste, his handwriting is nice, if oddly left-leaning, and perfectly legible, but the words look like so much nonsense. Charles is a bit confused til he spots a familiar phrase.

"It _was_ 'eruptions from the imperishable world,'" Charles exclaims triumphantly. "I thought I heard that." He beams at Max. "Your lyrics! Thank you."

"Quid pro quo enough for you?" Max asks.

Charles skims down the page and spots the words 'cock throne,' and grins. "Oh yes," he says. "Quite."


End file.
